Amputation sounds like such a permanent event! Mentioning it conjours up images of devastating loss and a severely restricted lifestyle. This is an experience to be scrupulously avoided. To give up a richly gratifying part of life for a one of physical limitation is just not worth the price! Or is it?
Matthew 5:29-30 If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body that for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body that for your whole body to go into hell.
Jesus is using a rather graphic analogy to tell us that some things, even ones that we consider to be part of ourselves, will not be permitted into the perfection of heaven. He is also letting us know, with a colorful metaphor, that God's patience will one day end. On that terrible day of righteous judgement, those who have chosen to reject His mercy will be cut off forever. On that day, they will see the end result of their own decision to follow the lies of violence and faithlessness. It is their choice to be cut off.
When we truly love someone, whether it is family, friends, or spouse, what we are doing is giving them ourselves, so that they, quite literally, become part of who we are. After we've spent time with someone we love, we began to think and act like them, and they to think and act like us. After all, isn't the goal of love to join the positive traits of two who are separate into one entity of purpose? Sometimes, after repeated efforts, when the one thought of as the other part of your heart, shows by their repeated actions that love is only to be used, without reciprocation, then amputation must follow. Sometimes they must be cut off.
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